I remember when “Broadcast News” was released in theaters and there was still a palpable excitement around the notion of a new film by James L. Brooks, and it made sense. He was, after all, a TV giant who had made the successful jump to films with the Oscar-winning “Terms Of Endearment,” and suddenly he was seen as important, as a significant mainstream Hollywood voice.

Cut to today, where we’re on the other side of films like “I’ll Do Anything” and “Spanglish,” and Brooks’s star seems considerably tarnished. Even so, I remain curious about anything he does precisely because of the moments he’s crushed it completely, like every single word spoken by Albert Brooks in “Broadcast News” or the great rolling misanthropy of Nicholson in “As Good As It Gets.” Brooks is a guy whose sensibility hasn’t evolved at all over the years, which isn’t a bad thing. He is the same filmmaker now he was when he began, with the same concerns, and his characters all still sound the same.

What has changed is the entire culture of film, and I’m curious to see if there’s still a place for what Brooks does. When I interviewed Rob Reiner recently, he complained that studios simply won’t make mid-price films aimed at grown-ups anymore, and those movies are the bread and butter for guys like Reiner or Brooks, films that star big movie stars but that aren’t particularly high-concept. He’s always been most interested with setting characters up on these deteriorating downward spirals, then throwing them together to see what happens.

That’s very much what it looks like we’ll see in “How Do You Know,” with Paul Rudd and Reese Witherspoon as the leads and Jack Nicholson and Owen Wilson playing the key supporting roles. I still can’t believe Rudd is playing Nicholson’s son. That’s awesome. He’s such a modest guy with so little pretense about his own work that I’m willing to bet even Rudd is still having a hard time processing the whole Nicholson thing.

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Is it just me, or does anybody else get the feeling that Owen Wilson’s role would have been much more entertaining if Woody Harrelson had been cast instead?

By: Anonymous

08.13.2010 @ 5:10 AM

Harrelson’s a little old for the part. He must be about fifty.

And the guy has like four years to come up with a title and this is it? How Do You Know? What were the back-up titles? “What’s Going On Here?” “Who Are You Again?” “Why Not Me?”

I could come up with a million of these—“This Is The Thing”, “As Far As I Know”, “Trust Me on This”, “It’s Not You”—

Okay, I’m done.

By: Rev. Slappy

08.13.2010 @ 8:21 AM

I’d love to see a director’s cut of I’ll Do Anything with all the songs added back in. I was always fascinated about the irony of I’ll Do Anything, a movie about test screeners that was ultimately undone by a legendarily bad test screening.

By: Brendan

08.13.2010 @ 2:37 PM

Man, I hate Spanglish. I mean, I think Sandler is great in that movie, but Tea Leoni plays perhaps the most despicable, hateful, piece of sh– human being ever, and the film makes no efforts whatsoever to give her an arc or anything approaching a payoff. Maybe that’s ‘Hollywood’ or ‘phony’ but it doesn’t change just how unpleasant and toxic every moment on film that she has.

By: MikeT33

08.13.2010 @ 3:12 PM

Ok, somebody is going to die in this. Here is how I know. All trailers to James L. Brooks mvies are cut the same. They make you think it’s a light comedy and then you sit down to watch the movie and you get hit with all the heavy stuff that they didn’t tell you about in the trailer. I’m not saying it makes for a bad movie. It’s just something I’ve noticed.